The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis

The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis, edited by Harris Cooper, Larry V. Hedges and Jeffrey C. Valentine and published by the Russell Sage Foundation in its 2009 second edition, is the standard scholarly reference on meta-analytic method across the social and behavioral sciences, gathering chapters from specialist methodologists on how to statistically combine and evaluate findings across multiple independent studies. Its strength is comprehensiveness and authority, the editors and contributors are established figures in research methodology and the volume is the reference most frequently cited when a study describes its own meta-analytic approach. Its limit, the same as any methodology handbook, is that it establishes how evidence should properly be synthesized rather than supplying any substantive finding itself, so it belongs in the atlas only where a claim needs grounding in what rigorous evidence synthesis requires, not as a source for any specific religious or paranormal claim.